A Murder in Time(3)
A choked sob escaped her.
This wasn’t heaven, after all.
1
Present Day
“You’re sure about this? Absolutely sure? We finally got the son of a bitch?”
Unease, as dark and slick as an oil spill, slid inside Kendra’s belly. She ignored the sensation, putting it down to the dozen pairs of eyes locked on her at the moment.
And not just any eyes. Three sets of those eyes belonged to assistant directors or associate deputy directors from a veritable alphabet soup of agencies—the CIA, NSA, and her own FBI, including a senior official from the National Security Branch, which had been formed post-9/11 to coordinate counter-terrorism, counterintelligence, and intelligence resources. The other members of the special task force were agents like her, although she was the only woman in the room. Depending on one’s perspective, that made her either very special or a freak. She shied away from choosing a side on that one.
“It’s Balakirev.” Kendra kept her voice cool and steady with an effort, though she felt those eyes pressing against her like a physical weight. “We managed to get a lock on his IP address after we covertly piggybacked onto one of his client’s wired accounts—”
“It wasn’t easy,” Special Agent Daniel Sheppard jumped in, excitement animating his usually taciturn features. “The sneaky bastard bounced the signal around the globe.”
Daniel was, at heart, a computer geek, and used his skills brilliantly within the FBI’s Cyber Action Teams. Normally, he was responsible for chasing malicious computer hackers throughout the world. This was the first time he’d been asked to track down a known terrorist.
“But Kendra—Special Agent Donovan—created a program that was absolutely genius,” Daniel continued, shooting the woman beside him a look of admiration. “It tracked his previous patterns, allowing us to leap forward, rather than catching up with his signal—”
“I understand.” Peter Carson, the FBI’s assistant director of the New York field office, raised his hand in an impatient, preemptive gesture to ward off what would undoubtedly be a long-winded session of techno-speak. Carson wasn’t a computer geek. He had no interest in the Internet, except to use it to nail the ass of one Vlad Balakirev, former KGB agent turned merchant of death.
The Russian had been Carson’s mission for more than a year, ever since the NSA had picked up chatter linking him to an al-Qaeda terrorist group rumored to be on the verge of setting up a cell in New York City. They’d formed an elite, multi-agency task force to track Balakirev around the world. And they’d come damn close to capturing him twice: once in Jordan and then, two months later, in Spain. But he’d eluded them. In the process, he’d taken out five of their Special Ops agents.
That had been a bitter pill to swallow, but nothing compared to the gut-clenching fear that Carson felt after receiving intel a month ago that Balakirev had slipped into the United States with a cache of chemical weapons to sell. Specifically, ricin, the deadly compound favored by Balakirev’s former KGB. Carson had been chewing Tums like they were candy after that news.
“I want to be sure—absolutely goddamn sure—that it’s Balakirev,” he said now, remembering the botched mission in Spain. How the hell had the Russian slipped through that net? He pushed that question aside to focus on Kendra Donovan.
If he felt a little squeamish about dealing with her, he was careful to keep that hidden. It had been his decision eight months ago to pull her out of the FBI’s Behavioral Analysis Unit, where she’d been using her profiling and computer skills to work on the country’s most vicious serial killer cases. It had given him a jolt to meet her in person, though. He put his reaction down to her age—only twenty-six, for Christ’s sake. But he’d read her file; he knew who she was. Hell, he knew what she was. The offspring of two scientists who advocated eugenics, she’d been a child prodigy, landing at Princeton when she was only fourteen. By the time she was eighteen, she’d gotten degrees in advanced computer science, psychology, and criminology. No wonder the Bureau had wanted her badly enough to circumvent their age requirement of twenty-three to get her in. Kendra Donovan was a capable agent, Carson knew.
Even so, it was damn distracting, discussing tactical operations with someone who wore their hair in a jaunty ponytail. Feminists could kiss his ass, but Carson was old enough and, yes, old-fashioned enough to still believe that to bring a woman—especially a woman who looked like Kendra—into an all-male environment was to invite disaster. But if Kendra had found Balakirev, he’d kiss the foot of every feminist he met. Damned if he wouldn’t.
“It’s Balakirev.” Kendra was pleased her voice was steady, revealing none of her inner tension. “We’ve tracked his signal to a warehouse in Brooklyn.” She hesitated briefly, her eyes, as dark as onyx, unreadable. She kept her gaze trained on Carson, even though she wanted to glance at the man on the other side of the room. “The warehouse is owned by Berkshire, Ltd. That’s a shell company for E.V. Inc., which is a subsidiary of Greenway International.”
She held her breath. She’d just dropped a bombshell.
“Greenway International?” That came from Bradley Thompson, the CIA’s associate deputy director. He surged forward in his chair. “Are you talking about Sir Jeremy Greene?”